Hell Hazard: The Magnificent Beatdown
by Dust Traveller
Summary: After an experiment with ancient technology goes awry, Roshtaria finds itself under attack by a menace far more unpleasant the the Bugrum... The Evil Dead. Fortunately for them, a certain Deadite Slayer tagged along for the ride.
1. We Are Experiencing Technical Difficulti...

"I was struck by lightning, Walking down the street. I was hit by something last night in my sleep. It's a dead man's party, who could ask for more? Everybody's coming leave your body at the door, leave your body and soul, at the door." Dead Man's Party, Oingo Boingo  
  
Some people have absolutely no luck. You can always recognize these people when you see them. They're the ones who get hit by a frigid splash of muddy water from the last puddle on the side of the road a day or so after it rains, usually when they're wearing their best clothing. They're the ones who's car always breaks down, or who have to undergo painful and expensive dental surgery right about when they would have had a little extra cash to spend on themselves (in a purely theoretical sense, let us say... a tax refund). In general, life just seems to walk right up to these people and squarely kick them in the jewels (regardless of whether they have them or not. Think of them as metaphysical jewels, floating blissfully around you, unaware of the danger.... and if that mental image doesn't have you freaked out, you have serious problems) then repeat as necessary once the unfortunate has hit the ground. Yes there are people who have absolutely no luck... except bad luck.  
  
Then there's Ash.  
  
Ash is a hero. There is no denying this particular fact. Ash has almost singlehandedly saved not only the present world twice, but the one of the past as well. Ash is not, however, a sterling example of heroism. He is not clever. He is not charming. He can move large crowds to follow him into battle, not so much because he is particularly glib or charismatic, but because he is louder then anyone else. He is not polite, nor is he a particularly charitable man in the strictest sense of the word.   
  
He is not well known for his self-control and vernacular purity.  
  
Ashley's success as a hero stems from one undeniable fact.  
  
He hasn't died yet.  
  
One might wonder exactly what such a mundane, ordinary man such as Ash might be doing saving the world. His job is certainly no indicator of greatness (he works as an employee of the S-Mart chain of supermarkets. Shop smart. Shop S-Mart. It is perhaps a testiment to his character that he is 26 years old, has worked there for 6 years, and is still stuck as a nightcheck housewares attendant). Ash's entire claim to fame is that fate just can't seem to get enough of screwing with him.  
  
Ash's problems are many and varied, but these problems come from a source that, when placed in the right perspective, is really quite simple. He sees dead people.  
  
This in and of itself is not a bad thing. While it's generally accepted that it's a good thing to spot dead people (they can be very easy to trip over, and are notorious for having absolutely no concept of right of way) Ash must deal with a very unpleasant fact about his relationship with the dead.  
  
They see him too.   
  
This causes him quite a bit of head trauma, and not the mental kind. The kind that comes from having one's skull slammed repeatedly against a solid object. Fortunately, Ash has developed an interesting strategy for dealing with this. He gets very mad. Then he throws off a remarkably dense (and usually crude), yet strangely appropriate one-liner.   
  
Did I mention the chainsaw for a hand?  
  
***  
  
"Way to go kid, ya did it." Ash whispered sadly to the woman who clutched that butt-ugly book in her rapidly cooling grasp. Ash felt a small surge of guilt that he'd been unable to prevent his hand from stabbing her in the back with a grotesque sacrificial dagger constructed entirely of human bone, but in his defense, his hand had a mind of its own.  
  
It was also no longer attached to his body.  
  
Wincing as he turned and shrugged his battered shoulders, he glanced about the room warily, a sound intruding into his pain and exhaustion fogged mind. Suddenly, the door flew open-  
  
-and just kept right on opening, fluttering off into the night like a startled, highly nonaerodynamic owl. Ash stared in mild (but rapidly growing) alarm at the vortex spinning in the woods just past the small cabin he currently occupied.  
  
-Oh shit...- he thought glancing desperately at the Necronomicon Ex Mortis. -I wish I'd stayed awake in Kondarian or whatever the hell that thing was written in 101 class in highschool.-  
  
He had very little time for introspection then, as he suddenly found himself dodging numerous kitchen and other less savory appliances. Ducking around what had once been the cabin's stove, he lunged forward, desperately grabbing hold of the kitchen counter with his one good hand. He cried out in alarm, then winced when the board pulled free of its mooring with a groan of tortured wood and caught on the cabin doorway.  
  
"For God's sake! How do you stop this.. AHHHHHHH!" He shouted in fear as the board broke in two and he found himself spinning end over end towards the biggest, baddest metaphysical toilet flush he'd ever seen...  
  
***  
  
There, in a nutshell, is Ash's humble beginning as a hero. Or at least a reasonable imitation of heroism in any case. He had battled zombies and demons only to find himself banished to a place far worse then hell.  
  
A place that did not have cable television. A place that did not have running water.  
  
A place that did not have genuine draft beer.  
  
***  
  
Ash stood up in disorientation, his brain having serious problems with a fifty foot drop into a brightly lit place immediately after the extreme dark of hell induced night. He blinked.  
  
"What... the hell?" he mused out loud, goggling at a dusty, unfamiliar landscape. A large number of armored knights rode up over the hell and surrounded him. He stared at them dubiously.  
  
-Oh Christ... where the hell am I?-  
  
He'd find out soon enough.  
  
***  
  
Yes, Ash found himself transported to the Dark Ages. Banishing the evil into the vortex had sent it to the past, and as ordained in the Necronomicon Ex Mortis, a hero DID arise to purge the evil from man's domain.   
  
Ash sort of became that hero by default when he was banished along with the evil. Of course this was not done without... complications.  
  
***  
  
He turned rapidly and came into a ready crouch, staring at... himself. He blinked.  
  
"Who the hell are you?" He asked, wonderingly.  
  
The other Ash grinned. "I'm BAD Ash." He tapped his chin mockingly. "And you're good Ash." His face twisted into a rictus of hate. "You're goody little two shoes Ash."  
  
He proceeded to caper about Ash madly, chanting this over and over again. Each two shoes comment was followed through with a jab into Ash's already well battered face. Ash watched him incredulously.  
  
Bad Ash suddenly found the barrel of a shotgun pressed firmly into his chin. He blinked and stared in shock at Ash, who nodded grimly as if to say, "Yeah... you know what's comin' next."   
  
A resounding blast later, Bad Ash crumpled against the base of a tree, his face a smoking ruin. Ash nodded grimly.  
  
"Good. Bad. I'm the guy with the gun."  
  
***  
  
Yes, Ash learned several lessons during his time in the past. Most importantly, that dead does not necessarily mean out of action. Bad Ash rose from the grave and led an Army of Darkness to reclaim the Necronomicon, the one book with the power to save the world, or cast it forever into darkness. It was also the only book that detailed how the displaced S-Mart clerk could find his way back home. Once the evil had been cleansed (and Bad Ash had been killed for the second time) Ash returned to his own time... but evil has a long memory... and all is not well for our reluctant champion of light (or more likely, Miller Light)...  
  
***  
  
-Yeah I coulda been King. But in my own way... I am King.-  
  
He ripped off his store clerk apron and leaned down with the girl in his arms, grinning. "Hail to the King, baby." He kissed her deeply.  
  
A sound caught his attention suddenly. He looked up, frowning at the interruption to his big love scene. Someone was clapping.  
  
He narrowed his eyes against the glare from one of the store lights. A man in a longcoat with a widebrimmed black hat walked toward him from the shadows. The man looked up, grinning, his face no longer hidden by the brim of the hat. Ash gasped.  
  
"You! How are you...?"  
  
Bad Ash grinned grotesquely, the lower half of his mouth horribly mangled by the shotgun blast that had killed him so long ago. He shrugged. "You of all people should have remembered Ash... evil doesn't die... it just gets uglier. It took me a long time to pull myself together after you launched me off of that damned catapult. Never did find my hand." He grimaced.  
  
"Still... I should thank you... another old friend of yours found his way to me and solved that little problem." He gripped his right hand and removed it entirely. It gave a stunned Ash the finger.  
  
Ash slapped his forehead. "God Damn it! How many times am I going to have to kill you two?"  
  
`Bad Ash smiled again. If at all possible, it was worse than the first time. "Oh... I think only one more Ash has to die today buddy. Nicole? Sweetheart? Could you hurt him for me?"  
  
The girl next to Ash grinned, her face suddenly becoming a mask of evil that would have made H.R. Gieger cringe. She howled in Ash's face. He waved his hand over his nose, wincing.  
  
"Man... don't know how I could have missed breath like that."  
  
She growled and launched a brutal right hook into Ash's face, throwing him fifteen feet away to land in a display of tuperware. He was lost from view under a pile of plastic containers.  
  
Bad Ash chortled. "Bet that stung."  
  
The zombie-like thing that was Nicole lurched its way towards the display, grinning with a mouthful of blackened razors. "What's the matter Ash, don't you like me anymore?"  
  
The pile of tuperware exploded outward and she warded a few stray containers away. Ash stared at her with a face full of extremely tired anger.   
  
"Honeymoon's over baby."  
  
The Winchester in his hands coughed three times in rapid succession, tossing the hellspawned witch back into the nearest cash register, which exploded like a demented slot-machine, throwing loose change and bills into the air like confetti at a wedding.  
  
Ash racked the lever action as he continued firing into the tangle of bloodied limbs the deadite had become, stopping only when it ceased twitching. Bad Ash looked impressed.  
  
"I see your skills haven't diminished since the last time we butted heads." Bad Ash taunted him.  
  
Ash narrowed his eyes and pointed the Winchester at the source of his discontent. "Yeah well... it's alot like riding a bike. Once you've splattered one deadite..." He let the sentence trail off into a rather obvious threat.  
  
Bad Ash grinned. "Oh I agree... in fact, let me give a little something more to test your skills with."  
  
He snapped his fingers. The aisles, which had been sheltering several scared employees and S-Mart shoppers, suddenly exploded into a frenzy of deadite driven action. Fifty slavering, twisted hellbeasts bent on his dismemberment howled their fury at him and started forward in a rush.  
  
Ash blinked. "Riiiiight."  
  
Then he tossed the empty Winchester at the first of them and ran as though hell were at his heels (which it was) for the employee locker room. Bad Ash chuckled.  
  
"Pussy..."  
  
***  
  
Makoto Mizuhara was a driven man.  
  
One might say that all of his life, Makoto had been driven in some way. In Highschool, Makoto had been a straight A student, a shoo-in at the school science fair, athletic and well-liked by nearly everyone. Makoto was one of those individuals who constantly pushes themselves to succeed, picks themselves up if they fail, dusts themselves off, and tries again. They are the overachievers, and they end up either doing one of two things:  
  
A) They snap like an overstressed twig and either spend the rest of their life muttering quietly to themselves in a dark corner, or become a writer of bad gothic poetry (which some would argue amounts to pretty much the same thing).  
  
B) They continuously succeed, becoming successful, charming, happy people, and bug the rest of us normal mortals to the point of really wishing some horrible thing would happen to them, which of course makes us feel terribly guilty, because THEY, of course, would never stoop to such pettiness.  
  
Still, the indominatable Mizuhara had reached the end of his patience.  
  
"Dang it." He shouted in irritation at the piece of junk he'd been fiddling with for the past four and a half days. He immediately looked around to see if anyone had seen him curse. Makoto had been raised better then that.  
  
He wiped an inordinately large amount of grease off on the battered coveralls he'd been wearing and looked over his notes distractedly. The words faded in and out of his vision, and he blinked.   
  
"Ahem." A wryly amused voice startled him out of his reverie and he looked up, surprised.   
  
"Oh... hello Nanami. What brings you here?"  
  
Nanami pushed into his workshop (a quiet corner of the Roshtarian Palace library) carrying a basket of something that could not be identified but smelled like heaven. She smiled at him. "Hi Makoto-chan! I brought you something to eat. You must be hungry, you've missed so many meals."  
  
Makoto blinked. "Have I?" His stomach muttered in muted disgust. He looked down, embarassed. "Maybe I have. I can't stop now Nanami... I'm so close.."  
  
"So close to what, Makoto?" She set the basket on his worktable and looked in quiet curiousity at the jumble of unidentifiable junk that graced the Hero's table.  
  
Makoto sighed. "I'm not sure exactly. I THINK it's a microportigenesis device, but I-"  
  
Nanami blinked. "A... huh?"  
  
Makoto raised an eyebrow. "A microportigene-" He blinked and rubbed the back of his head. "Oh... I'm sorry... that's the old Roshtarian term for it. I guess the best way to describe it..." He frowned. "The Eye of God is a good example, although on a much larger scale. Each of the Portigenesis devices essentially open up a doorway to another world. The Eye of God, from what I've been able to gather, opens up to a place between dimensions... a sort of empty space. It doesn't really blow things up, it just puts them somewhere no one will ever find them." His eyes turned momentarily sad at this prospect. The moment passed, but not before Nanami saw it.   
  
Nanami looked dubiously at the pile of junk. "Makoto, I don't think Roshtaria would appreciate you building another Eye of God without them knowing."  
  
Makoto sweatdropped. "Well... I said they were similar, not exactly the same. This is a microportigenesis device. It's not capable of transporting anything large enough to be dangerous, just a person... maybe two or three. I'm trying to fix it, that's the easy part. The hard part is getting it attuned to the right place..." He sighed again. He didn't need to explain what he was trying to do with all of this. They both knew he had only one goal in mind.  
  
He sighed. "I'm not having much luck I'm afraid."  
  
Nanami smiled sympathetically. "Well you're not going to get anywhere on an empty stomach Makoto Mizuhara." She wrinkled her nose at his dirty coveralls. "Not to mention... how long has it been since you last slept?"  
  
Makoto blinked and looked upward, concentrating. "Uh... four days ago... I think?"  
  
"Makoto! You are not going to do Ifurita any good if you collapse out of sheer exhaustion! You eat that food, and then you march yourself right off to bed or so help me-"  
  
Makoto sighed. "I guess you're right. I wasn't making much progress anyway. Thanks for the food, Nanami."  
  
She grinned happily. "You're very welcome Makoto-chan, that'll be five hundred yen." She put a hand out in front of him, never changing her sunny expression. Makoto gave her a tired sigh.  
  
"I should have known."  
  
"Hey, a girl's gotta make a living somehow! Besides, I'm giving you a ten percent discount." She smiled brightly.  
  
In the midst of checking his pockets for loose change, Makoto failed to notice the series of lights that flickered dimly on his workbench, then died.  
  
***  
  
Ash leaned heavily against the thin metal door between him and fifty or so slavering deadites each bent on sampling a little Ash sashimi. Judging from the regular blows he felt through the door, these deadites were just as persistent as their Dark Age counterparts. He sighed.  
  
"Well Ashley, this is another fine mess you've gotten thrown into. Someday I'm going to have to have a talk with God, and sort out exactly what it is I've done to piss Him off so badly." He winced after a particularly well-placed blow made a fist shaped dent right under his spine. He took stock of his situation.  
  
"One things for sure... I can't stick around this popsicle stand for much longer." He stared hard at his locker. "If I could just reach..." He planted his foot against the base of the door and reached across the room for his locker, which had the words, "Back off Assholes" stenciled in bold black letters with a crudely drawn skull and crossbones underneath them on the battered metal door. He sighed.  
  
"No good. Just gonna have to do without-" He stopped, spying a mop. It was a pristine example of a mop. In Ash's relieved gaze, it glowed as though showcased by the lights of heaven itself. Reaching out his foot he slid it carefully under the handle of the mop and flipped it towards him. He caught it with his good hand and surveyed the door. It had several fist shaped dents in it, and rattled with every blow the deadites on the other side could throw at it. The door knob was one of the latch-like variety that, when pushed down, opened the door. It did not have a lock, the makers of the S-Mart chain of buildings having deemed it either unnecessary to maintain employee privacy, or too expensive to include (probably a little of both). Ash jammed the mop under this lever, then stuck the other end in the corner. Stepping back warily waiting for any sign that the mop was going to slip, he paused. It shook, wobbled slightly... but held. He grinned.  
  
Keeping a wary eye on the shuddering door, he dialed the combination on his padlock. 6... 6... 6... and the lock opened easily. He frowned. It had been four months since his return to modern civilization, and Ash had gone through this new, mundane chapter in his life half in fear that it would be taken away (like so many of the normal, safe times in his experience) and half pissed off at the rest of humanity for not knowing or caring about the things he'd been through. When he'd tried to tell his story no one had believed him, and quite a few individuals had eyed him as though he might be crazy. To be perfectly honest, Ash himself wasn't entirely sure that he WAS sane. One can hardly face what he'd faced and not go a little nuts. It was even possible that he'd dreamt up the whole incident, (though his missing hand gave him serious doubts about that theory) but Ash had once been a Boy Scout, and the Boy Scout motto was (buy these amazingly tacky, overpriced and slightly melted candybars, at least in my opinion -DT) ALWAYS be prepared.   
  
This explained the contents of his locker.  
  
He removed his battered but heavily customized chainsaw from the hook it hung on and, after digging through the several dirty magazines that camoflagued (RIGHT, and that's ALL they're for. Heh.) the bottom of his locker, found the well-oiled, brand new blade for it and snapped it into position with a click. He then pulled out a large, heavy backpack (this had been the only way he was able to smuggle what he had decided he would never leave home without day after day without gaining the attention of his fellow employees) opened it, and pulled out his trusty sawed-off twelve gauge. Cracking it, he opened one of the four boxes of shells also contained in the backpack and shoved two shells into the shotgun, flicking his wrist to close the breech. He then removed four, and then on careful consideration, six shells from the box and stuffed them into his shirt pocket. Pulling up his left sleeve, he removed the metal gauntlet/prosthesis he had attached to his arm and slapped the chainsaw (if there was one thing he'd learned in his fight against the Army of Darkness, it was that when one had access to a chainsaw, one made damn sure that one couldn't lose it) snugly into place. He then dropped the hand into his backpack, zipped it up and slung it over one shoulder.   
  
Jerking his left arm twice, he finally managed to start up the chainsaw, which purred like an exceptionally loud and sore-throated kitten. He narrowed his eyes at the door. Then he smiled.  
  
***  
  
Just when Bad Ash was becoming bored with the whole cat and mouse routine, the door to the employee locker room exploded outward. While the locker room door had never been intended for much abuse (it's main purpose was to stop people from looking in, not from charging out) it was still an impressive enough show of force to cause the deadites who had been pounding on it to back up in alarm. Ash strode out of the locker room, a hard look on his face. His chainsaw seemed to growl in anticipation.  
  
"Attention S-Mart shoppers." Ash announced grimly, his voice echoing through the entire store. "There is a sale on Ass Whoop in aisle 7. I repeat. Ass whoop in aisle 7. Thank you."  
  
He leveled his shot gun at the nearest deadite and grinned. The shotgun boomed in a voice that shook several cans from a nearby shelf displaying cat food. The deadite collapsed into a twitching heap, its head splattered across an advertisement for kitty litter.  
  
All hell broke loose. Literally.  
  
Deadites came streaming at him from every angle, screaming their hatred for the living. Ash spun easily and turned the first incoming zombie's face to dripping green hamburger with a swipe of his chainsaw. Blood and bits of flesh splashed across his face. He snarled and spun towards the next target, slamming the barrel of his shotgun against this zombie's skull, and forcing it into the path of the first zombie, who still staggered around clutching the ruins of its head. The two went down in a tangle of limbs. A third zombie leapt at Ash and he swung his chainsaw around, growling in fury. The zombie hit the far wall in two seperate pieces, the bottom half twitching spasmodically, the top half coming to a rest in a more or less upright position. It picked itself up on both hands and followed the harried deadite slayer, who had begun charging down aisle seven. Two quick slashes of his chainsaw and two limbs from two seperate zombies flew across the aisle as he passed. He made a beeline for Bad Ash, who stood with his arms crossed, gleefully watching the carnage. Ash grinned.  
  
"I'm comin' for you, ugly!" He snarled, kicking a zombie in the chest, then three times more in quick succession as it hit the ground, snapping at his legs with razor sharp teeth. He booted its head clean off of its body with one well-placed kick. The head bounced off a rack of bubblegum, then rolled across the checkout scanner for one of the checkout aisles.   
  
The scanner appeared to be confused.  
  
Just as Ash approached to within ten feet of the source of all his woes, something with extremely bad breath and, more pertinently to Ash, very sharp claws leapt onto his back. It shrieked in his ear, then attempted to bite it off. He struggled to reach it, swatting at it with his shotgun. It was apparently too agile.  
  
Bad Ash chortled. "The fun's just begun Ash!"  
  
"Get the hell offa me you lousy-" He slammed his back against a display that held kitchen utensils. This proved to be a tactical error.  
  
An extremely hard and flat metal object rang against Ash's skull, which rattled his brain around like a marble in a jar. Ash went momentarily cross-eyed, then snarled and jumped up and fell on his back. He felt the air whoosh out of whatever was on him, then felt the impact of another blow from the frying pan the thing had in hand. He managed to get a leg behind him, then pulled himself torturously up with his knee pressed against whatever it was's abdomen, the thing continued to rain blows on him the whole time. Finally he turned and parried the next blow with his chainsaw, the cutting action of the saw ripping the frying pan out of the things hands (actually it just ripped the thing's hands off. Lower level deadites are not well known for their sound construction) Ash continued downward, burying the chainsaw in thing's chest. He looked up and his eyes widened in horror as another deadite launched itself at him. He dove backwards, catching the thing's chest with his boot and helping it along its forward trajectory past his head. As it flew by, he put the other shell from his shotgun into its chest. Meaty bits rained down on him in a grisly... well... rain of meaty bits.  
  
Standing up quickly, Ash started running in the opposite direction. A deadite clawed at him from the top of the nearest aisle. He taught it the error of its ways by cracking open the breech of his shotgun with its skull. He dumped the shells out of his weapon and held it under one arm, desperately shoving in new shells awkwardly with his good hand as he ran.   
His choice of escape venues was probably not the best. As he charged down the aisle, snapping shut the shotgun with a flick of his wrist, he happened to run across a section of highly polished floor that was no longer highly clean as well (it was currently covered in deadite ichor [or worse]). He suddenly found himself in the unenviable position of having his feet where his head should have been and vice versa. Slamming his head heavily against the floor, he stared woozily up at the ceiling.  
  
Bad Ash slapped his knee. "HAHA! Spill in aisle 12! Spill in aisle 12! GET HIM BOYS!!"  
  
"Errrg.." Ash muttered intellectually.  
  
Then he remembered where he was.  
  
Just as six furious deadites dogpiled him.  
  
***  
  
"This is really good Nanami!" Makoto grinned gratefully as he shoveled ramen into his mouth. As usual, when he actually took the time to realize he was hungry, his appetite returned with a vengeance.  
  
The entreprenuer blushed. "Why... thank you Makoto-chan." She grinned.  
  
He sighed happily. "Where would I be without you Nanami?"  
  
If at all possible, Nanami's blush deepened. "I don't know Ma-"  
  
Makoto dropped his bowel of ramen and raised a hand. "Shhh! Shhh! Wait a minute."  
  
She blinked. Makoto raised an eyebrow, obviously listening intently for something.  
  
His face brightened into a triumphant smile. "It's WORKING!! He jumped over to the pile of junk and laid his hands on it, looking intent.  
  
Nanami blinked again. "Are you sure?"  
  
He nodded excitedly, stabbing wires into random locations and turning dials and switches. "All I have to do is focus on her location in nullspace. She hasn't been in there long enough for her charge to deplete too far down so she should be putting out a large amount of energy... it'll be like..." he grinned excitedly, "There she is! It's gotta be her!"  
  
"Makoto, I don't think..." Nanami looked dubiously over his shoulder at the random dancing of electrical pulses across the cracked screen in front of him. "I mean... how are you sure it's her?"  
  
Makoto smiled. "How many things in nullspace do you think produce enough energy to run a small city indefinitely?"  
  
She blinked again.  
  
***  
  
Ash was in trouble. Not his normal variety of trouble. REAL trouble. The kind of trouble that comes from being held down by six killing machines that not only have the temper of a wolverine on speed, but also have a craving for human flesh. His worst enemy stood over him, grinning (at least, it LOOKED like he was grinning. When you only have half a face, it's sometimes hard to tell) evily.  
  
"Look at you Ashley. You're my bitch."  
  
Ash snarled at him. "Why don't you come down here and say that you son of a-"  
  
One of the deadites punched him heavily in the face. He shut up, glaring.  
  
"Now Ash... there's no need to resort to harsh language. Now, as I see it, I COULD kill you. As much as I would enjoy... ripping... you... to pieces." He shook with silent rage, clenching his fists. "Ahem. As I was saying, as much as I would enjoy that, it would be over so... quickly."  
  
Ash glared at his tormentor in a manner that suggested HE could get along just fine with killing HIS other self.  
  
"No Ashley, what I'm going to do is far far worse. See..." he reached into his coat and pulled out the Necronomicon. "I found this being gaurded by the descendants of the wisemen you left it with. They had NO IDEA what they had been protecting for all those years. Too bad for them. Of course, what I did to them is nothing compared to what I'm going to do to you."  
  
"You seem to like sending my masters to limbo... well, I figure there could be no better punishment then returning the favor."  
  
"You rotten, lousy, decaying son of a bitch! Come 'ere, I'm gonna.. ooo... I'm gonna.." He struggled in the clutches of his deadite captors. Bad Ash opened up the dreaded book and began to recite passages from it.  
  
The lights in the S-Mart flickered. The few electrical appliances running (some display fans circulating air over head) began to turn highly unsafe speeds, smoking beginning to pour from overheated motors. Ash paled.  
  
-Oh crap... this is bad.- He thought to himself. Then he spotted his shotgun. It was just inches away from his good hand. He strained to reach it.  
  
"Veleious, kondar... kondaaar, ghehote..."  
  
The smoke from the damaged fans began to swirl in a menacing and unpleasant manner. Ash gritted his teeth, his fingers touching the trigger gaurd.  
  
"Ph'nglui mglw'nafh..."  
  
A hole of impenetrable darkness opened up at the vortex's center, various pieces of paper and loose bills still fluttering from the combat before circled toward it. Ash got his fingers on the shotgun and began dragging it painfully towards him.  
  
"Catalhu r'lyeh wgah'nnagl!"  
  
The vortex opened up full force, bodies and cans of various produce being sucked into it. Ash began to slide towards it slowly, gritting his teeth.  
  
"Hey asshole... if I'm going to hell... yer comin' with me!"  
  
Bad Ash blinked as he finished the invocation. "Fhtagn! Kondar! Huh?"  
  
Ash grinned tightly at him, leveled his shotgun at his nemesis' feet, and pulled both triggers.  
  
"YEOWOOW!" Bad Ash articulated as the lower part of his right foot and leg disintegrated. He lost his braced position and fell backwards, the book flipping upwards out of his grasp...  
  
All eyes followed it as it fluttered gently upward, the macabre face on it leering down at them. In slow motion it flew into one of the ridiculously fast spinning fanblades....  
  
And exploded in a shower of grisly pages, quickly lost in the swirling hell that was a doorway to another world.   
  
Bad Ash howled. "NOOOOOOOOOO!!"  
  
Ash managed to grin fiercely as the vortex swallowed him and his tormenters... then all was darkness...  
  
***  
  
Flipping through endless nothingness, Ash reflected on his fate. This isn't what he'd wanted. All he'd ever wanted to do was settle down, have a couple of kids, and watch monday night football. That was all. Modest dreams. Fate never seemed to work that way however. Kids had become a distant hazy memory, since every woman he'd cared for in the past few years had become the possession of a nameless evil and forced him to kill them. He didn't LIKE doing it, but if it was him or them, then he'd send flowers, god damn it.  
  
A sudden shape in the distance caught his attention. It started as a tiny speck, then rapidly grew into the last thing he'd thought he'd see in such a place. A beautiful, ethereal woman with flowing grey hair floated serenely in the darkness. He sighed.  
  
"Looks like I ain't the only one with problems. Hey sister!" he called out.  
  
No answer.  
  
"Hey! Yo! Speaka de english?"  
  
Still no answer.  
  
A ray of pristine blue energy struck him suddenly from behind and every nerve screamed in pain. He arched his back (as much as he was able, the deadites around him had apparently died, whatever dark forces that animated them having been cut off when he was sucked into the portal. Still, they clutched him with a strength only death or superglue can impart) and cried out, cursing. He then found himself moving at high speeds toward the motionless woman. Bouncing off of her painfully, he spun sickeningly towards the source of that blue light. As he was currently being electrocuted, he was not at his most observant, but had he been watching the ethereal woman retreating in the distance, he might have noticed that she had opened her eyes for split second.  
  
For a split second, she'd looked confused as hell.  
  
***  
  
Makoto sweated as he manuevered his precious package towards his end of the portal. Nanami hovered over his shoulder, watching the events unfold with an uncharacteristically worried expression. Suddenly, the monitor for the device flared blindingly white for a moment, then died out, smoke pouring out of the top of the jumble of machinery. Makoto did what any good technician would do: he slammed it repeatedly on the bench, hoping for some sort of reaction.  
  
Nothing.  
  
He slammed his fist down on the table in bitter frustration. "So... so close Nanami... I had her. For a moment, I had her but..."  
  
Nanami smiled sadly. A part of her was sympathetic...  
  
A part of her that she was ashamed to acknowledge was a little glad.  
  
***  
  
Ash felt something odd moving across his face. It wasn't unpleasent, just odd. It was also familiar. He opened his eyes, which immediately began to tear.  
  
"Where am I?" He muttered. Then he figured it out.  
  
Oh. Wind. He shielded his eyes with one hand and looked around. He was currently moving at high speed immediately above a jumble of limp deadites, preparing for a high speed and probably fatal impact with what appeared to be an roof out of a bad production of 101 Arabian Nights. He blinked.  
  
"Oh SHIIIIIIIIIIIIIII-" CRASH. He impacted with the roof, and continued through.  
  
***  
  
"I'm sorry it didn't work Makoto-chan. Maybe you can fix it."  
  
"Maybe." He looked dubiously at the smoking ruin of what was once a piece of ancient Roshtarian technology. His tone suggested that he didn't have much hope.  
  
Then things got a little wierd.  
  
The roof didn't just break, it exploded and bodies began raining from the sky. One of them was screaming rather loudly. It hit the table, broke it and sent microportigenesis parts flying everywhere. It (or rather he) lay in the center of this mess on top of a pile of extremely dead (and very ugly) people. He blinked.  
  
"OW."  
  
He screamed hysterically for a second, causing both Nanami and Makoto to back up against the wall, watching him wide eyed.  
  
He stopped. Started again. Then rolled over and stood up.  
  
He was obviously human, vaguely handsome though his face was covered in several small scratches and bruises, as well as a prodigious amount of blood that may or may not have been his.  
  
The fact that some of it was green suggested the later.   
  
He was clothed in a ragged dark grey shirt, and black jeans whose condition suggested he was a charter member of the Def Leppard fan club. On his back was an overstuffed backpack as well as some sort of sheath. In his right hand was a shotgun, which he held as though he was afraid it would be taken from him.  
  
His left hand... well, his left hand was a chainsaw.  
  
At least, that's what it looked like.  
  
Makoto and Nanami shared a dubiously stunned look.  
  
Ash stopped stumbling around and took stock of his situation. He was in a well appointed (though very messy) library of some sort. Two teenagers stared at him in mute shock, one obviously Japanese in a pair of grimy coveralls, the other... well she looked Japanese, except her hair was bright orange. He blinked.  
  
"Wha... what the hell is this happy horseshi-"  
  
A deadite chose that exact moment to wake up and sink its teeth into his calf.  
  
Everyone started screaming.  
  
*** 


	2. Uses For Tools That Tim Allen Never Imag...

"There's somethin' happenin' here. What it is ain't exactly clear. 'Cause there's a man with a gun over there, a tellin' me, I got to beware. Sayin' stop hey, what's that sound everybody look whats going down." -I have no friggin' clue but it's a good song  
  
There is a phenomenon experienced in certain life or death situations which can only be described as a "moment of clarity". It is a mystery that cannot be explained adequately to someone who has not experienced it. What, exactly, causes it is unknown. Some undefinable strength that empowers certain individuals when they need it most? If this is true, it is perhaps the greatest argument for the existence of a higher power. Perhaps the answer is not so mystic. Perhaps after a certain amount of terrifying stimuli, a person's sense of reality simply stands up from its chair, tosses down its headset in disgust, and mutters to itself quietly as it goes off for a mochacchino. The resulting sense of clarity is simply the same detachment one gets while watching a particularly gruesome movie. Whether or not this enlightened awareness is the result of divine intervention or simple hysteria, one thing cannot be argued against. Great things have been accomplished in this state of clarity. Men and women have sawed through their own trapped limbs, bound the resulting stump with duct tape, then driven themselves calmly fifteen or so odd miles to the nearest hospital.   
  
Ash had experienced this particular phenomenon before in his battles with the undead.  
  
This was not one of those times.  
  
***  
  
"Argggh! You dirty mother- ARGH!" Ash wailed incoherently as the deadite sank its teeth deeper into the flesh of his calf. He spun about in a circle as though he were attempting to wrench the zombie loose by centrifugal force, waving his hand and chainsaw about in a manic dance that probably would have caught on quite quickly in a rave.  
  
Another deadite woke up sluggishly and almost tentatively grabbed Ash's other foot. He stomped heavily on its fingers until they resembled a mass of scrambled hotdogs and ketchup.  
  
Well, maybe green ketchup.  
  
Ash stumbled backwards towards Makoto's workbench, tripping over another sluggishly moving deadite and falling to one knee. His left arm swung around from the momentum of his spin, and the chainsaw connected with one of the legs of the workbench. While not on, his chainsaw was still a good thirty pounds of metal, and in addition to the force behind it was enough to snap the leg of the workbench completely in two. The workbench did what any sensible and heavily laden piece of furniture would do when turned into an ungainly tripod and tipped over, dumping about one hundred and fifty pounds of fried microportigenesis device and a plate or two of beef ramen onto Ash's noggin.  
  
Ash was unamused.  
  
Clawing his way out of the debris (Ash had suffered worse head trauma getting out of the shower, so he was largely unaffected. Ash is to head trauma like white is to rice, the two are inseperable, and unless steamed tend to be sticky... er... yeah) Ash cast around with his free hand for something, ANYTHING to get this damned undead bastard off of his leg. He spotted a screwdriver spinning lazily a foot or so out of his reach. Looking up at the two stunned teenagers, he cleared his throat, then snapped his fingers.  
  
"Hey... KID! YEAH YOU... WITH THE BAD PERM JOB.... Mind handing me that god-damned screwdriver?"  
  
The deadite bit down harder and chortled madly and Ash gritted his teeth and hissed.  
  
Makoto blinked. His brain was still having problems with the whole concept of undead people and gaijin crashing into his life from the heavens. This was undoubtedly a byproduct of his experiments with the microportigenesis device, but how did it result in... this?  
  
Nanami's jaw dropped. Bad... perm job? What the... Certain instincts more important then fear kicked in and she scowled at him, putting her hands on her hips.  
  
"How rude! If you wanted a screwdriver, you could at least ask a bit more nicely."  
  
Ash blinked in astonishment. "You gotta be shittin' me."  
  
Nanami turned her nose up. "There's no need for foul language, if you want help, ask nicely."  
  
The deadite seconded her notion by worrying its teeth deeper into his thigh.  
  
"PrettyprettypleasewithsugarontopgivemethefuckingscrewdriveryouAHHHsonofa-!"  
  
It occured to Nanami (who had her own ways of dealing with moments of extreme stress) that perhaps it would not be a good idea to antagonize the crazy gaijin with the powertools and hunting weaponry. She reached down and picked up the screwdriver, tossing it to (read as AT) Ash. Then she did what any sane and rational individual would do at the sight of an extremely crazed gaijin screaming and dancing around with what appeared to be rejects from the first Resident Evil game in the center of what HAD been a rather cute little meeting between her and the (clueless) object of her affections. She took off running towards the nearest exit, with the intention of calling in the castle gaurd to deal with this mess. While this may have seemed like cowardice on her part, Nanami is above all a realist, and when one is faced with extreme danger, it is better to allow the professionals to get kill-.. er to deal with it.  
  
Ash grabbed the screwdriver and jabbed it into the deadite's mouth. Gritting his teeth, he painstakingly levered open the creature's vicelike grip on his leg, cursing softly to himself as he did so. Finally getting his chewed up limb out of the monster's jaws, he slammed the point of the screwdriver through the bottom of the creature's mouth and into the wooden floor of the library. Pounding on it once to insure that the thing wasn't going anywhere, he pulled himself out from under the mass of ruined machinery and blearily took stock of his situation. One of the things still remaining had stumbled to its feet, and was now advancing on the other teenager, who had a look of almost comical confusion on his face. The thing leered at him and started forward, its feet a couple of inches off the ground in a downright vulgar lack of concern for gravity. The teenager in question "eeped" quietly, then eyed his surroundings for something to defend himself with. While not a coward, Makoto was not what one would call a seasoned combat veteran, (the extent of his martial experience being the art of throwing himself in front of city leveling blasts in efforts to save his friends) and judging from the twisted piece of metal he'd picked up from the ruins of his discovery, things were not going to go well for him.  
  
"Can we talk about this?" He asked weakly, his natural reaction towards diplomacy coming to the fore.  
  
"I'LL SWALLOW YOUR SOULLLLLLL!" The thing shrieked at him, raising its arms threateningly.  
  
Makoto paled. "I guess not."   
  
There was a very important sounding click. Makoto blinked. The thing turned in confusion.  
  
"Hey kid..." Ash intoned, levelling the now reloaded shotgun at the creature. "Sorry about the mess."  
  
The shotgun boomed like the voice of God proclaiming the deadite "naughty in his sight" (or at least, in Ash's sights) and a large amount of gore and green blood coated a stunned Makoto Mizuhara. He blinked.  
  
"T-That's alright."  
  
The things legs twitched spasmodically then collapsed to the ground.  
  
***  
  
Cleaning up the rest of the hellspawned mess was relatively easy for a seasoned veteran like Ash. The remaining deadites seemed confused, as though they were going through the metaphysical equivilant of jet lag. Ash calmly dismembered then with the air of one who had been doing this for entirely too long. Makoto lost his lunch somewhere after the second twitching corpse, and perched miserably on the corner of the upset work bench. Ash regarded his handiwork thoughtfully. The deadite stapled to the ground by its lower jaw and a large screwdriver eyed him evily. He frowned.  
  
"Missed one."  
  
"Wet-ted mort skum!" The thing hissed at him, though the horrifying effect was somewhat lessened by the screwdriver induced lisp it stuttered around. "Destwoyer a the necwonomicon! The dead Swall ave ter vengeance!"  
  
"The... that thing is DEAD!" Makoto exclaimed weakly, his eyes goggling in horror.   
  
"Yeah..." Ash grumbled, raising his growling chainsaw. "Not as dead as it's going to be in a minute though..."  
  
"But... but the dead aren't supposed to talk..." Makoto babbled.  
  
"I don't think anyone explained that to these guys." Ash cracked, reasonably.  
  
"The mwaster Sal Swawow Youw Sowl!" The thing lisped, reiterating its company's mission statement.  
  
Ash slapped his forehead. "I KNEW that asshole was gonna pop up. I just knew it." Never one to let a bit of bad news keep him down, Ash grinned fiercely. "Well... he's gonna have to take a rain check." Then he went to work.  
  
***  
  
As usual, seven palace gaurds, Nanami, and Londs arrived approximately five minutes too late to do anything constructive. They burst into the library and were greeted with the unlikely image of a shell shocked, goresplattered Makoto watching in awe as the equally gorespattered stranger consumed what little of the lunch Nanami had prepared for Makoto that hadn't been soaked in gore or splattered all over the floor.   
  
"Don't get me wrong kid," Ash remarked jovially through a gigantic mouthful of ramen, "Nothing wrong with Chinese now and again, but an hour after ya eat it, you just get hungry again." He absently kicked an arm across the room that had been stealthy clawing its way toward his boot.  
  
Nanami scowled. "Hey! Th... that's Makoto's lunch." She pointed an accusing finger at him, as the rest of the observers stared at her in a state of shock. The state of said lunch was not what they expected to weigh most heavily on the situation.  
  
"Relax sister. Your boyfriend didn't look like he wanted any." Ash poked the chop sticks into the mass of noodles and stirred them around, then picked up the resultant mess of noodles and almost got them into his mouth. The mess dropped back down into the container and he scowled. "Friggin' people oughta learn to use forks like the rest of the civilized world."  
  
Nanami, still stunned by the whole "boyfriend" comment, could only stare in outrage. Londs (a professional when it comes to the whole outrage thing) choose that moment to react.  
  
"WHAT IN THE NAME OF ALL THAT'S HOLY HAS TRANSPIRED HERE?!"  
  
Ash blinked. "Who's this asshole?"  
  
"GUARDS!! APPREHEND THIS... THIS RUFFIAN!!"  
  
Ash dropped the container of noodles and scowled, his face full of righteous indignation. "OH NO! I'm not going through THIS again. If you rotten bastards want me yer gonna have to do it over my dead-"  
  
Not one to disobey orders, the nearest Roshtarian gaurd executed a beautiful spinning swipe with the butt of his pike that caught the weary and injured deadite Slayer soundly across the back of the skull. Ash blinked, then turned to regard the gaurd in question.  
  
"Hey... that was a neat trick." He grinned, then his eyes rolled back and he collapsed in a comatose heap.  
  
Londs regarded the snoring ruffian approvingly then turned to Makoto. "Master Makoto! Are you alright? This blackgaurd hasn't injured you I hope?"  
  
Makoto blinked, regarding Ash solemnly. "He's going to be really angry when he wakes up." He said with the air of someone who is not looking forward to said occasion.  
  
Everyone sweatdropped.  
  
***  
  
The Necronomicon Ex Mortis is not a normal book. One can tell this simply by looking at the cursed thing. Bound in human flesh, and inked in human blood, the book is shrouded in legend and mystery. Some argue that it was in fact simply the Nekros-nome-ikon of Sumerian religion, and the existence of several known Sumerian burial rites within its pages supports this arguement.   
  
This is not entirely true, however. While incredibly ancient, the Sumerians were not the first practicioners of the Dark Arts. The book predates Sumeria by several thousand years, suggesting that it was, in fact, not penned by humans at all. Certainly the language contained within is alien to mankind, requiring extreme vocal dexterity to pronounce a vast majority of the hellish text.  
  
Much like modern stereo instructions.  
  
Modern equivilants of it pop up from time to time, but these are simply poor translations of the original book. Even these poorly executed copies hold immense power, such feared books as The Book of Fifty Names, the supposed Book of Nod, The Unausspreleuchen Kulten, Liber Diabolicus, and the famous (perhaps infamous) Necronomicon penned by a certain mad Arab come to mind.   
  
Still, as powerful as these copies are, the translation is somewhat confused, and hence the true evil of the book is greatly diminished.   
  
Again, much like modern stereo instructions.  
  
The true Necronomicon has a mind of its own. It is empowered with the dark energy of alien gods, creatures of night that due to the power of creation find themselves imprisioned and chained within rational, though still monstrous, forms. They CANNOT exist in a physical sense, because their nature defies existence itself. They seek to return the physical to a state of pure chaos, where they can roam freely. Still, they require the intervention of the physical to wreak their vengeance upon the world, and it is for this purpose that the Necronomicon exists.  
  
As much as it would be a pleasant dream, the Necronomicon cannot be destroyed by the simple act of throwing it into a fan.  
  
Even one retailing for seventy-five ninety-five at your local S-Mart (Shop smart... I think you get the picture)  
  
The Book was scattered into several different pieces by Ash's intervention, but these pieces had found their way to El Hazard, and its influence there was beginning to grow. Already, its agents searched for the forbidden pages stealthily, like mold creeping onto a piece of stale bread, their questing tendrils moving through the earth quietly.   
  
The Necronomicon yearned to be complete again, and chance favored the return of the book to its original state.  
  
It also favored the various pieces finding their ways into any number of... interesting hands.  
  
***  
  
Bad Ash was having a Bad Day.   
  
It was interesting how one could be on top of life (or unlife as the case may be) one moment, then on the bottom of a compost pile missing half of one leg the next. Bad Ash clawed his way irritably to the top of the rotting vegitation he'd come to consciousness under, his coat slimed with algae and worse. Bits of decayed matter (some of it not his) matted his hair, and he'd lost his hat somewhere, which was unfortunate, because he'd really been fond of that hat.  
  
Just one more thing to rip out of Ash's twitching hide.  
  
The thought made him smile. He shook his head. Enough day dreaming. Casting about irritably, he located his left hand where it lay apparently stunned in the muck. He threw a rotten, unidentifiable something at it and the hand stirred feebly.  
  
"Wake up you SLUGGARD!" He roared, dragging himself towards it. "We've got to find our damned book!"  
  
The hand made a questioning gesture before crawling towards him like a lopsided spider.  
  
He growled. "I know you idiot. I can feel it, but the feeling is odd. It's probably scattered to the four winds of this place..."  
  
The hand made a gesture as though to say, "Duh", but Bad Ash missed this "remark". To be honest, the hand was the smarter of the two, but since it lacked any real vocal capacity aside from the occasional high pitched mumble (though how the hell it managed even this without vocal cords is a question better left unanswered) it had a tendency to defer to its louder companion.  
  
Bad Ash picked it up, brushed off some muck and replaced it back on his wrist. Looking at his surroundings, he found that he was currently in the middle of what appeared to be some form of marsh. The sounds of insects, the strangely twisted trees, and several creeper vines made this obvious. He whistled (or tried to... it might have just been the sound of wind whistling past his perforated lower jaw) appreciatively.  
  
"Looks like we ain't in Kansas anymore, Toto."  
  
The hand twitched irritably.  
  
Dragging himself painfully over to a nearby tree (or what passed for one in this dismal place) he grabbed one of the lower limbs and, with the monsterous strength born of one who no longer has to worry about muscle damage or exhaustion, ripped the living branch from from the tree. Stripping the twigs and other protruding odds and ends off of it, he jammed it into the oozing end of his damaged leg. It sank in a few inches, making a sickening squelching noise. Gathering his strength, he wobbled to his feet, taking a few experimental steps.   
  
His left hand burbled. He growled. "I know I know... its a pretty crappy substitute, but it'll have to do until something... better wanders along." He grinned in anticipation. It made one feel sorry for whoever wandered across his path first.  
  
He hobbled towards the east, following the incessant and demanding tug that some portion of the book was making on his mind. Evil has a great hunger for the Book...  
  
There are very few as evil as Bad Ash.  
  
***  
  
Moebus, leader of the pitiful remnants of the phantom tribe, pondered the current state of his peoples affairs. Most important to him was their battle readiness, in other words, just how close they were to beginning anew their assault on the Roshtarians, in order to seize the technology they needed to get home.  
  
The words, "not bloody likely" seemed most appropriate.  
  
His people, while long-lived and exceptionally hardy, did not reproduce easily, meaning that while their numbers had steadily dwindled over the years, the humans had multiplied like pests. The unfortunate fact was that after Lord Galus, who had been their last best hope for vengeance, had met his ignoble end at the top of the Eye of God, the plans of the Phantom Tribe had been dashed, probably permenantly. To further sign his people's death warrant, he'd been forced to quell a large number of bloody coup attempts, mostly directed at other members of Galus' faction. When Galus had died, it had removed what had essentially been the keystone to the only alliance among the Phantom Tribe Lords to exist in centuries. Power was something the Phantom people prized above all else, and the resultant power vacuum had threatened to destroy them all.  
  
That is, until Moebus had shown up.  
  
Moebus had been overlooked as a possible enemy by the more powerful Lords, and in the bloody nights of cloak and dagger, his holdings had been largely untouched. Lord after lord had fallen to one another's treachery, and it was then that Moebus had struck.   
  
Moebus had been a minor functionary, barely above the level of peon, but he'd been an important cog in his Lord's war machine. A part of Lord Galus' spy network, he'd simply converted Galus' web of contacts and minions into his own and waited. Once his rivals had bleed themselves dry of resources, he'd calmly stepped up, executed the lot of them, then settled himself into the position of leadership.  
  
There were complaints at first, but when the more vocal members of the resistance to his rule had unfortunate accidents (usually along the lines of tying themselves up, blindfolding themselves, then tossing themselves carelessly back onto several sharp pointy objects, repeated as necessary) the rest simply shut up and acknowledged that though he might not have been a true Lord, he was definitely meaner then any of them.  
  
Moebus was beginning to wish he hadn't bothered.  
  
A group of scouts clustered in, forgot to bow, then stumbled over themselves to show the proper respect. The resultant gagglefuck made Moebus look up irritably and glower.  
  
"Yes yes, what is it?" He snapped irritably.  
  
"Begging... begging your pardon Dread Lord, but we've... found... that is, we've discovered a-"  
  
Moebus shot him a look that could roughly be translated as, "get to the point soon, or I'm going to have to have you killed here rather then elsewhere, which will further irritate me because it will make a mess on the carpet."  
  
"This had better be good."  
  
The group of scouts parted to reveal a misshapen and pitiful creature that might (if one squinted at it and tilted one's head to the left slightly) have once been a Phantom Scout. Clutched in its gnarled deathgrip was a scattering of pages with strange arcane symbols inked in a familiar rust-colored substance. Moebus put on his specticles and frowned.  
  
"What have we here?" He leaned forward, narrowing his eyes.  
  
The creature looked up at him and shuddered. "The... the book... it... it has whispers... it tells me... darkness... power.... death...." It rocked back and forth, crying quietly to itself. The other scouts unconsciously retreated away from it.  
  
Moebus grinned. It was a grin that several of the scouts recognized. It made them wish very much to be elsewhere. Being the recipient of that grin usually meant that one was going to disappear, quite possibly in several different directions.  
  
"Interesting, tell me more..."  
  
*** 


	3. This is my BOOMSTICK!

"I built a little empire out of some crazy garbage called the blood of the exploited working class. But they've overcome their shyness now they're calling me your highness and the world screams... kiss me, Son of God." -Son of God, They Might Be Giants  
  
Villainy. The word is used throughout history to describe men and women who strive above and beyond the call of duty to be downright nasty and mean. Be they kickers of puppies, destroyers of worlds, or telemarketing clerks, one and all, these proud few understand the true nature of the struggle between good and evil. Evil wins when good does nothing... this is accepted as fact. Philosophically, this could be considered a point in the favor of villains... perhaps they are acting in tune with the natural order of things... the furtherance of Entropy, the eventual breakdown of any system to its basest form. Selfishness, greed... these emotions are powerful, more powerful perhaps, then love or honor, because they are more intertwined with our own instincts. Survive. Multiply. Thrive. Eliminate competion. Dominate. At any cost.  
  
What more basic outline of a villain's motivation do you need?  
  
Of course all of this reflection on the state of villainy is rather pointless, because the subject of our examination does not consider himself to be a villain.  
  
In point of fact, those who surround him look to him as a hero and leader.  
  
Katsuhiko Jinnai.  
  
***  
  
"Damn that Mizuhara!" Jinnai (or as he would prefer, God Emperor Jinnai) exclaimed as he brought his clenched fist down on the Bugrom serving as a sort of mobile table. The Bugrom in question took this abuse stoically (of course, this could have been due to the fact that its back had the equivalent armor of a half inch of steel, but who knows... perhaps his feelings were hurt... it's hard to tell with Bugrom) maintaining its hunched, scuttling gait in an attempt to keep up with Jinnai's pacing.  
  
This was somewhat thwarted by the fact that the God Emperor in question was prone to sudden shifts in direction as dictated by whatever paranoic fantasy entertained him at the moment, thus making the Bugrom's plight something along the lines of a lost cause.  
  
"Damn him! What is he up to?" A sudden warble from the direction of one of the expressionless Bugrom got his attention and he rounded on the offender.  
  
"Of COURSE it's him, Groucho! Who else could have created such a strange explosion over Roshtaria? Who ALWAYS does this just as MY plans are nearing fruition?"  
  
The bugrom in question shrugged. Humans looked pretty much identical to him.  
  
"You idiot! Who have I been talking about all this time?" He narrowed his eyes and he hissed the hated name through his teeth, as though simply uttering it caused him pain. "Mi. Zu. HARA!!"  
  
He stood still panting, hands clenched and forehead veins bulging. A human observer might have been concerned about his blood pressure, had there been anyone around to witness the phenomenon. The bugrom however, don't understand the concept of blood pressure, nor really much of anything else that what went on in the bodies and minds of any creature who so garishly hid the hard parts of their anatomy INSIDE their flesh of all places. They did, however, understand their General's fury.  
  
They'd certainly seen enough of it.   
  
So they watched passively until he let out a long sigh and closed his eyes, running his comb through his slick hair. His expression smoothed into an easy grin just as his hair did, (smoothed, not grinned) and he shook his head.  
  
"It doesn't matter. Operation Get-Into-the-Castle-and-Destroy-That-Idiot-Mizuhara-and-All-His-Simpering-  
  
Little-Friends (Operation GICDTIMAHSLF for short) is already too close to completion to be thwarted now. Speaking of which...  
  
"Harpo! Give me a report on Operation Gicudtimas... Gicudutin.... Gucdti... On the Operation!" He scowled... he'd labored long and hard for a name that fit so glorious and cunning a plan... and in the end had come up with a name that was also long and hard to remember (even for him) but it was the only thing he was able to come up with that truely displayed it's majesty.  
  
Jinnai is, after all, a born politician.  
  
The Bugrom in question saluted and warbled on and off for approximately five minutes. Jinnai nodded resolutely and cackled at all the right places, even though he already knew everything the unfortunate Bugrom had to say (after all, he was the General, and the General knows everything) he let the report drone on while his mind drifted to the moments after his most crushing and dark defeat at the hands of... of that.... cheater. He scowled for a moment then smiled. He had been reborn, after all... rising in phoenix-like splendor from the ashes of defeat like... er.. some very phoenixy... thing. This, he reasoned, was proof that if there was a god out there, he was on Jinnai's side. Of course his rebirth had not been without it's hardships... the incident with Kalia... that OTHER alternate world... repopulating the Bugrom empire-  
  
Well... repopulating the Bugrom empire hadn't really been all that much of a hardship... but it HAD been... draining.  
  
Still, none of that mattered now. He'd finally come up with a scheme that fool Makoto wasn't going to see through... at least, not unless he could see through miles and miles of dirt. He'd reasoned (correctly) that the only possible explanation for his defeat had been the overwhelming amount of ancient weaponry arrayed against him. Namely, Ifurita, and the Eye of God. Ifurita was no longer a threat, having disappeared off the face of El Hazard (probably sucked into the Eye of God, which served her right, the traitor) but much to Jinnai's consternation, the Eye Of God still floated blissfully in the sky like some cursed Sword of Damacles.  
  
Then it occurred to him that perhaps he'd gone about this all wrong. Taking the land in a massive Blitzkrieg operation had worked, for a time, but only because the Roshtarians had been unable to operate the Eye of God without the missing princess. The Roshtarian army, while pathetic and no match for the mighty Bugrom Horde, had still been tenacious enough to hold them off long enough to activate that cursed Eye. It stood to reason that it would be again. The key, then, would be to secure the city Roshtaria before the Eye could be activated... sieze it, then hold the entire population hostage. The enemy was pathetically squeamish about civilian causualties (they did not understand as Jinnai understood that in war, all people are combatants, though they might not all be ARMED combatants) and Jinnai felt reasonably sure they would not fire the Eye upon their own kingdom.   
  
Once he'd determined the objective, it was relatively easy for his cunning tactical genius to come up with a way to accomplish this goal. His solution was so elegantly simple, there was no way it could possibly fail. The Bugrom were insects, adept at digging... why not simply DIG into Roshtaria?  
  
So, having determined the objective, the strategy, and the logistics, Jinnai had simply turned to the next obvious step in any plan of his.  
  
The deception.  
  
The rebuilt Bugrom Fortress sat imposingly in the crater that once housed its predecessor, manned twenty-four hours a day by tireless and fearsome Bugrom... dummies. flying Bugrom made round the clock patrols around the fortress as well, but this was simply to keep up appearances. For all intents and purposes, the fortress was simply a hollowed-out shell that appeared far more dangerous than it actually was. The Bugrom, and consequently Jinnai, hid their true intentions by simply appearing to be building forces in the same old fashion. In truth, the entire society of the Bugrom now nestled deep underground several hundred miles closer to the Roshtarian border. The massive, seemingly endless tunnels stretched far into Roshtarian territory, several miles underneath the Holy River of God... and a few months away from resting directly beneath the castle itself. In addition, advancements in Bugrom archetypes had made massive spying operations possible... camoflagued Spyrom really just variations on the tiny messenger type bugrom kept a vigilant eye on all major locations of Roshtarian activity.  
  
Which explained how he was able to receive his recent spat of troubling reports.  
  
The Spyrom in question had witnessed a strange dark explosion in the sky, followed by a rain of several strange objects. Various odds and ends... strange currency, bits and pieces of machinery... and a cash register had rained upon Roshtaria for a few short moments. A few strange objects had streaked out over the horizon, like dark comets headed for who knew where. Then even more disturbing... something had screamed as it dropped into the castle itself, though the Spyrom had been unable to report what that was. Hopefully it was dead. Jinnai didn't need any variables in his equation of conquest. Still, he supposed it hardly mattered.  
  
"You can't stop me this time, Mizuhara... You won't even see me coming until it's far too late. Who's laughing now? Who's laughing NOW!?"  
  
As if to punctuate this, his laughter echoed noisy all the way down the tunnel, to the reach the receptors of toiling Bugrom.  
  
***  
  
Makoto Mizuhara paused in his deliberation to sneeze, politely covering his mouth then grinning sheepishly.  
  
"Excuse me." He offered, politely.  
  
"But as I was saying, I'm not entirely sure what went wrong. One moment I had the device locked on to what could only be Ifurita, the next moment, the screen just went wild and well..." he looked down.  
  
Londs stroked his beard and looked sternly at Makoto, though his eyes betrayed his concern. The boy toiled endlessly to save the lost Demon God. Still...  
  
"Though I sympathize with you Sir Makoto, I must ask that you refrain from unauthorized experiments in Ancient technology. It is not in Roshtaria's best interests to reach blindly into alternate worlds."  
  
"What about Ifurita's interests? She's all alone out there!" Makoto exclaimed, standing up. He was prepared to continue his passionate argument when a gentle voice that was nonetheless full of quiet authority stopped him dead. He sat down.  
  
"Sir Makoto, I understand that you want to do what is best for Ifurita." Princess Rune Venus watched him quietly, her eyes also full of concern. "Certainly I would much rather see her here and safe than all alone in the dark. However, as the evidence shows, random probing into the unknown is frought with peril. The ancients made the Eye of God so difficult to activate for a reason."  
  
Makoto sighed tiredly. "It's all a pointless argument anyway. I don't think I could fix the Microportigenesis device even IF I had all the right parts. I don't even know what all the right parts are... it was badly damaged when I found it."  
  
Londs nodded, secretly glad. "All the more reason not to tamper with such things. The ancient technology is just that... ancient. There's no telling if it will operate as intended..."  
  
Makoto looked up. "I'm not giving up. If there is some way to save her... I will find it."  
  
The princess smiled. "No one is asking you to give up, Sir Makoto. We ask simply that you show a bit more restraint. Asking permission would have been nice."  
  
Makoto winced, then grinned sheepishly and rubbed the back of his head. "I'm really sorry, your Majesty."  
  
"No apology is necessary, Makoto." Rune smiled gently at him. Such a nice boy.  
  
Londs cleared his throat. "Now, on to other business... what are we going to do with our... uninvited guest?"  
  
Makoto shuddered, remembering the earlier events. So much had happened... he was unsure what, really HAD happened. One thing he was certain of, however. This Ash character was dangerous.   
  
"I don't think he means us harm personally... those things were trying to kill him. Me too, for that matter. Still... I'm not sure he's... well... completely sane."  
  
Londs sniffed, irritably. "Raving lunatic, as far as I'm concerned. The man made a complete mess of the Library. Was it absolutely necessary to rend his enemies limb from limb? Not to mention his endangerment of you and the lady Nanami... simply unforgiveable."  
  
"Now Sir Londs..." Rune chastized quietly, "it would be wise to show some tolerance given the situation. The man spent God knows how long in the void with those things. One can imagine he was a bit... distracted."  
  
Sir Londs shook his head. "I don't know if we can afford tolerance, your highness... we don't know anything about him. For all we know, he could have been put there for a reason."  
  
Makoto shook his head. "I have some theories... but the best course of action would be to ask him when he wakes up. I'm sure he'll listen to reason. As to not knowing anything about him, I'm almost positive that he's from the same world as us."  
  
Londs snorted. "But he's nothing like you!"  
  
Makoto shook his head. "Just like not every country here is Roshtaria, there are different countries in the world I came from as well. His... attitude and demeanor suggest that he hails from a country called The United States of America."  
  
"A..mere...e...ca?" Rune sounded out the difficult word delicately. "It must be an... interesting place." She reasoned.  
  
"Probably full of barbarians." Londs growled under his breath.  
  
"It certainly is... different from Shinonome." Makoto agreed.  
  
***  
  
Ash woke up from his head trauma induced slumber into a head trauma induced headache. Blinking irritably at the piercing white light surrounding him, he fervently cursed whoever had decided a skylight belonged in... where ever the hell he was. He lifted his good hand to cover his eyes, then discovered much to his dismay that he could not LIFT his good hand. Looking himself over, he was none too surprised to see that he had been securely bound to his bed.  
  
"Well doesn't this figure." He muttered aloud. He cranned his neck in several directions to look at his surroundings. He was being treated in some kind of hospital, given the sterile smell and the whitewash of his surroundings. However, this was not your average hospital, as evidenced by the primative nature of the walls and ceiling, and the lamps that hung unlit overhead. All in all, he'd been in worse hospitals (that ill fated trip to Baja came to mind, he shuddered to think about that particular incident. Go in for food poisoning, come out with an infection. How did THAT work?) but this definately wasn't an American hospital.   
  
That ruled out a bottle of Wild TUrkey being the culprit in this particular nightmare.  
  
Unfortunately.  
  
He began a careful check of his personage and discovered that he'd been bound in much the same manner as one would bind an individual in a hospital who might thrash an injure himself or others, but whom you don't see as a great threat. In other words, bound securely but not too securely. He was comfortable, just unable to move. Of course, only his arms were bound, and at the wrist. Even considering the fact that he was missing one hand, whoever had done this was no fool, at least, not when it came to tying people up. If anything, his stump was bound even more securely then his good hand. Good attention to detail, that. If he wasn't mistaken, his belongings were stacked by the door, which meant either whoever had bound him was absolutely sure he wasn't going to get loose, was unaware of their potential for destruction, or was simply convinced that being near his possessions would reassure him.  
  
Unfortunately they were wrong on all three counts.  
  
"HEY!!! HEY IS ANYBODY THERE? I WANT OUTTA HERE, YA HEAR ME?" He shouted, the veins in his neck flaring.  
  
"HELLO!! BAD PERM GIRL!! LITTLE JAPANESE KID! GET IN HERE!"  
  
He frowned.  
  
"I'M FEELIN' A LITTLE UNLOVED HERE!"  
  
Nothing.  
  
"WHEN I GET OUTTA HERE, SOMEONE'S GONNA BE THE PROUD OWNER OF A NEW A-"  
  
With a suddenness that shocked him into silence, the door opened. He blinked as what was obviously a nurse ducked in with a tray, turning quickly to set the tray on the counter next to him. He cranned his neck at as awkward an angle as he could without breaking his own neck, but he was unable to see the woman in question.  
  
"About time somebody showed up." He groused. "Why am I bein' kept tied up?"  
  
A cool, seductive voice answered back. "Why sir... you are being kept restrained for your own protection... and that of others."  
  
"I ain't gonna hurt nobody!" He said indignantly. Well, maybe that old geezer who called him a blackguard. He wasn't sure what a blackguard was... maybe some kinda deoderant, but that wasn't the point. Him and his goons deserved a beating.   
  
Not that he said any of this out loud.  
  
The nurse did not respond to his reply. He sighed.  
  
"Look, I ain't plannin' on goin' nowhere... there's no reason to keep me tied up." he said reasonably.  
  
"You're right." She said simply, fiddling with the tray.  
  
He stopped short, blinking. "Well... ok then... if you'll just untie me..."  
  
"You're right, Ash..." She giggled insanely, raising a rather sharp looking knife.  
  
His eyes widened. "Oh fu-"  
  
'YOU AREN'T GOING ANYWHERE!!!" The deadite shrieked, dropping its human mask to reveal a wizened, ugly corpse in a nurses outfit.  
  
Ash began to shout.  
  
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-"  
  
***  
  
Now... bearing in mind that amazing feats of strength have been mentioned before in this story, it's no surprise that Ash should find himself capable of what he did next. One might have said that this was what set him apart from your average citizen, what made him a hero. You could say that when the cards were down, when the die was cast, when there seemed no escape, Ash will always pull out that ace, or throw that seven, dodge that flying head, or whatever other analogy you wish to use. Simply because that's the kind of tenacious bastard that Ash is.  
  
You could say that, but you'd be wrong.  
  
The truth is, it was simply because Ash was scared shitless.  
  
***  
  
"-AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"  
  
Ash bellowed in the kind of terror that only someone about to be probed in the face with a sharp metal object can produce (he'd made the same noise the last time he'd gone to the dentist, but then, haven't we all?) and somehow managed to free himself and throw himself off of the bed.  
  
Well, almost.  
  
It turned out that the bindings securing his stump actually WERE better done than his other hand. The bindings securing his right hand snapped right off, but the bindings over his left wrist held stubbornly, turning his sudden dive to a jerking halt. The sudden shift in balance upset the bed (really more of a slightly sturdier than average cot) that he was secured in, falling with him to the ground and placing an impromptu barrier between him and the deadite, who had descended with such bloodthirsty glee that she had fallen to the floor, jabbing the surgical knife deep into the floorboards. It shrieked in rage and began to pry the deeply entrenched knife from the floor to try again.  
  
Ash wasn't having any of that.  
  
Standing and drawing up the bed with him, he flipped it around (no easy feat considering the fact that he was still secured to it) and settled it squarely down on top of the irritated dead thing, which responded with a series of obscenities that would have made a crack whore blush, had any crack whores been present.  
  
This was the scene that the two guards who had been standing outside the room burst in on.  
  
Of course, their perception of the situation was somewhat different than Ash's.  
  
"Get off of her, you maniac!" The more quick witted of the two shouted.  
  
Ash stopped shouting and stared at him like he'd grown a second head. The bed beneath him jerked up and down with amazing force, punctuated by animalistic grunts that would have made that girl from the exorcist proud. "You gotta be shittin' me."  
  
As the two guards levelled their spears at him, the second of the two chimed in. "Get off of her, you fiend!"  
  
The tear-stained face of a frightened young nurse appeared from under the bed. "Please get him off of me, I'm so scared!"  
  
Ash blinked. "Oh... you dirty rotten bit-!"  
  
The rest of his expletive was lost as the guards proceeded to beat him off of the bed.  
  
"Ow! Ow! Quit that... Can't you see she's... dirty rotten son of a.."  
  
Ash had been stick beaten before, and he hadn't particularly care for it then, either. Of course, as was the case then, he didn't have much choice in the matter.  
  
Fortunately (or unfortunately depending on who's side you're on) the beating was stopped (or possibly just postponed, this is Ash we're talking about) when the deadite under the bed popped up like a jack-in-the-box, and without looking at the two stunned guards beside her, thrust out her hands to either side, squarely into both of their slack jaws. The unbelievable force behind the blows was enough to send them both careening into opposite walls with wall and bone cracking force. They slumped with a groan to the floor and did not attempt to regain their footing.  
  
The deadite picked up her knife and grinned at Ash. "Dinnertime!"  
  
Ash shook his head. "Not this piece a' meat."  
  
Throwing his secured left hand violently towards the deadite stalking him, he used the bed in a manner it was most certainly not intended (namely, beating the stuffin' outta someone) and swept the deadite's feet out from under it. It hit the ground hard, then rolled over the bed, over Ash, then to his other side, bringing the knife down in a vicious stab for Ash's chest. He rolled the other way, over the bed (hitting his head on one of the legs and paying no attention to the pain) then pulling the bed up on its side to make a wall between him and the Deadite. It screamed at him and launched itself up several feet into the air over Ash, beginning a screaming descent that would end with an Ash-kabob. Ash rolled over further, dragging the bed to a standing position, and watching dismally as the knife tip penetrated the bed to rest less then a foot from his face.  
  
"This sucks." He bitched.  
  
The next few minutes proceeded comically as the Deadite tried to slash and stab him, and he kept moving the various endangered limbs out of its reach. Losing whatever patience he had left, he kicked up at the bed, throwing the deadite off and into the nearby wall. Getting out from under the bed, he stood up and glanced around dazedly. His gaze lit on his belongings stacked near the wall, and the shotgun resting with them. Behind him the deadite stood up and hissed at him, green ichor dripping from its ruin of a mouth.  
  
It saw the shotgun too.  
  
Ash made a break for it, somewhat hampered by the bed still strapped to him, and the deadite chased him mercilessly. Hopping over one of the prone guards (more by accident then design) he feinted left, then juked right, throwing the deadite momentarily off his tail. Screaming incoherantly at him, it jumped on top of the bed, and the sudden change in weight jerked Ash off his feet. The thing grinned evily and crawled across the bed towards the now prone Ash, hissing in anticipation as it leaned over the end of the bed to gaze down at...  
  
Both barrels of a sawed off shotgun, and the grim, determined face of it's quarry.  
  
"Surprise, bitch." He quipped, then pulled both triggers.  
  
***  
  
"I really don't think it's necessary to-" Makoto started, when he was interrupted by screaming.  
  
The three of them stopped, momentarily shocked into indecision, then all at once jumped to their feet. They looked at one another in dismay.  
  
"It might not be-" Makoto started to say, when he was interrupted again.  
  
"He's crazy!! Run for your lives!" A nurse shouted as she ran past the meeting room.  
  
Makoto sighed and followed as Londs and Rune ran for the infirmary.  
  
***  
  
"What is going on here!?" Londs bellowed as he arrived on the scene. To say it was chaotic was somewhat understated. A trio of scared nurses cowered in a corner, and not one, not two, but three troops of guards waited cautiously just outside the door to the infirmary. Several small holes peppered the wall on the other side of the doorway, which was currently being blocked by a bed, or several beds. One guard sat on the other side of the door, clutching his shoulder as blood seeped through his white fingers. He glanced up at the shout, then struggled to stand, grimacing in pain.  
  
"Sir... the... intruder somehow got loose, then killed one, possibly three people and barracaded himself into the infirmary... he has some sort of projectile weapon, and he says he'll-"  
  
"I swear ta god, if one of you primates so much as comes NEAR that door, I'll give you a new ventilation hole. I tried ta be nice about this, but I guess you don't want nice Ash. Now you're gonna get asshole Ash, and believe me... I'm a bigger asshole then ANY of you assholes!"  
  
Londs closed his eyes and shook his head. "I feared it would come to this... it appears we have little choice. Get the men ready... shields and swords this time. We'll rush him all at once. Hopefully the majority of his fire will be stopped by the shields. In any case he can't get us all."  
  
The man nodded. "Sir." He saluted then ran off to get things ready. Londs shook his head again.  
  
"I'm... so sorry." Makoto mumbled, leaning against the wall heavily.  
  
"This is not your fault Makoto... It is mine. I should have trusted my instincts and had him thrown into the dungeon." He sighed.  
  
Makoto sighed and closed his eyes. -But I brought him here in the first place- he thought dismally. Something scratched his pants leg and he looked down, blinking.  
  
"Makoto... no kill loud man."   
  
He blinked again. "Ura... what?"  
  
"No kill loud man. He no kill."  
  
He reached down and picked up the strange animal that had loyally protected him time and again. The guardian cat stared unblinkingly into his face.  
  
"Ura see. Man no kill. Bad come. Bad try kill. Trick guards. Hit guards. Man kill bad. Not bad." It said plaintively.  
  
Makoto blinked, this was quite a speech for the little thing. Of course, it was often in a position to see things, since it was so small, but what if it was wrong?  
  
Had it ever been wrong before?  
  
He set it down and looked at Londs. The older man had drawn his sword and now stood with a borrowed shield at the head of a contingent of palace guards. Makoto frowned.  
  
"Sir Londs... wait just a moment."  
  
Londs turned to look at him and shook his head. "Now is not the time, Makoto."  
  
Makoto put himself between the contingent and the doorway (but not in the path of the crazed gaijin's fire) and spread his arms. He shook his head.  
  
"There has to be a way to resolve this without anymore bloodshed."  
  
"Makoto, stand aside." Londs ordered. "Now is the time for action."  
  
He didn't even blink. "I'm going in there. After all, this is all my fault. Maybe I can reason with him."  
  
"out of the question. I refuse to put your life in any more danger today." Londs scowled.  
  
"You're not putting my life in danger, Sir Londs. I am."  
  
"Ura too!" The guardian cat squeaked, then wrapped around Makoto like a furry breastplate.   
  
Makoto grinned. "Ura too, I guess."  
  
Londs massaged the bridge of his nose. That boy.  
  
"It's my fault, Sir Londs. I'm going in there." Makoto stated.  
  
"I already said it's not your-"  
  
"It's my fault he's here." Makoto finished, again, not wavvering in the slightest.  
  
Londs sighed. "I suppose I have little choice in the matter."  
  
"Be very careful, Sir Makoto." Princess Rune Venus said quietly, then smiled. "And good luck."  
  
That pretty much sealed the deal.  
  
***  
  
Ash watched the doorway intently from behind the bed he'd upturned in the center of the room. It had sounded like the guards were getting ready to bum rush him a second ago, but all of that activity had stopped.   
  
It was quiet out there. Too quiet.  
  
"Don't try anything stupid! Me and old double barrel here have a really good home remedy for stupid."  
  
"Please don't shoot, Mr. Ash sir... I'm coming in." A shaky but clear voice floated in from just outside the doorway.  
  
"Like Hell you are!"  
  
"I'm unarmed... I swear! I'm coming in now..."  
  
"Don't be..." he stopped as the boy arounded the doorway, momentarily surprised by the boy's courage. -you got balls kid.- He thought grimly. -Not too bright, but definately a big set on ya.-  
  
Nevertheless, he pulled back both hammers.  
  
"Stop right there." He ordered, freezing the kid with one leg over the barracade at the door he'd set up. "I thought I told you not to..."  
  
He trailed off, looking at the... thing wrapped around the boy's chest.  
  
"Uh... were you aware that you have... a cat on your chest?"  
  
Makoto glanced down, then back up quickly. "Um... he's not a cat, well, not an earth cat anyway. His name's Ura, and he's a guardian cat. Nothing can hurt him."  
  
Ash raised an eyebrow. "That's... pretty fricken weird."  
  
"Shooting me won't do you any good, Mr. Ash." Makoto said quietly.  
  
Ash narrowed his eyes. "That thing ain't gonna save you if I unload into your head, kid..." At this, the boy gulped. "But you're probably right about it not doin' me any good." he allowed grudgingly.  
  
Makoto used his hesitation to step completely into the room and show both hands. He glanced around and saw the two snoring guards (both tightly bound to one another with their own boot laces) and... a nurse lying very still and very dead. She appeared not to have a head. (nor any bread... quite full of lead... her name is not Ted... sorry)  
  
"Why did you kill her?" he asked in a near whisper.  
  
Ash's eyes flicked to the corpse, then back again. "Not a her. An it. It was one a' them."  
  
"How do you know?" Makoto asked.  
  
Ash rolled his eyes. "Don't know many people who bleed green, kid."  
  
Makoto blushed and sat down on the barracade.  
  
"What are they, Mr. Ash? Why are they after you?"  
  
Ash sighed. "Don't really know for sure, but I think the Book calls 'em Kondarian Demons. They possess people... turn em... bad. As to why they're after me... I dunno. I guess I just pissed in their cheerios one too many times."  
  
Makoto blushed at his "colorful" metaphor, then looked him squarely in the eye. "And you had to shoot her?"  
  
Somewhere in Ash's tired soul, another trickle of pain flowed into an already almost overflowing pond.  
  
"It was her or me, kid. I didn't have a choice. Once those things get into ya, it's pretty much all over but the kicking and the screaming. Lots... of kicking and screaming." his voice was gruff, and quietly full of regret.  
  
Makoto sighed. "I'm sorry Mr. Ash."  
  
Ash closed his eyes. "Yeah. So am I, kid. So am I."  
  
He lowered the gun tiredly to the ground, not really giving a rat's ass what they did to him now.  
  
He was just too damned tired.  
  
*** 


End file.
